Leviticus: A Quick Overview | Whiteboard Bible Study

The Book of Leviticus is certainly not the most popular book in the Bible today, so what is it about and what makes it so important? Hello friends, I'm Jeffrey, with an

overview

of the Bible and we're going to look at this really important but often a little bit. Misunderstood Book of the Bible Now, if you are really familiar with the Bible, then you already know that the Bible is divided into two main sections: there is the New Testament, which discusses the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of his followers, and then there is the Old Testament. which analyzes the relationship between God and the people of Israel now Leviticus is the third book of the Bible and, therefore, it is the third book of the Old Testament.

The first five books of the Old Testament are known as the Torah or the Pentateuch or the books. of Moses and these were the foundations of the Hebrew faith and right in the middle of this group of five books we find the Book of Leviticus. Now the Book of Leviticus is named after the tribe of Levi, which is a group in ancient Israel that was responsible for maintaining the temple and other sacred artifacts that the ancient Jews used to interact with God and this book is really important because it tells the beginning of that whole story of how the ancient Hebrews interacted with this really powerful being that they believed dwelt among them. them on earth now we are going to look at the structure of Leviticus, we will see the actual content of the book here very soon, but to understand why this is so important, we must look at the theme of Leviticus, which can be summarized in a simple command that God repeats throughout the book.

The book is set with God giving messages to Moses and sometimes to Moses and his brother Aaron to convey to the people of Israel and a repeated message from God is to be holy as I am holy, so the people of Israel are supposed to He is holy just as God is holy, but what does holy really mean? Well, holy means separate, set apart, 100% sacred, it is not something common and therefore what the ancient Jews believed was that their God. who we will simply call God was very, very holy, he was completely separate from the world they lived in and he was high and above all humans, all animals, all features of nature and all the gods of the other nations that the other people adored.

You may remember in the book of Exodus when God rescues the people of Israel not only from the people of Egypt but also from the gods of Egypt, that is what the ancient Jews believed and therefore what we find at the beginning of Laviticus or right before Leviticus begins is God rescued Israel, brought them out of Egypt and led them into the wilderness where he made this agreement with them and before he made that agreement we have this scene of God on the top of a mountain, Mount Sinai, he It appears in this form of a cloud of fire and then at the foot of the mountain you have the people of Israel, they are camped there and there is a great distance between God and Israel that occurs in the middle of the book of Exodus, that is when the people hear the 10 commandments, but at the end of the book of Exodus we have God, we have this cloud that descends and dwells within the camp of Israel.

This is huge for the ancient world because you have this all-powerful cosmic being now living in a tent with normal mortal people. It's a huge thing to have to deal with and essentially what we're seeing in the Book of Leviticus is that God has moved in with Israel, we have this huge, powerful being that is now trying to coexist with mortals who are not as holy and not as holy. Special and powerful like his God, Moses makes a tent called a tabernacle and it is like a portable temple. This is a place where heaven can meet earth where the divine in the mortal realms can overlap and at the end of the Exodus.

We have this problem. Israel breaks part of the agreement that God made with them on that mountain and that is not very good. We have already established that humans find it difficult to live by God's standards and not even Moses. able to enter this portable temple, so Moses cannot even enter this tabernacle to meet God, so this is a problem, we have this very holy being surrounded by ungodly people, but at the end of Leviticus we have Israel meeting some laws that can allow you to interact with God and live in this camp with your God.

Moses can enter the tabernacle, that's really good. We see God speaking to Moses in the tent at the beginning of the next book of numbers in the Bible and then at the end of Leviticus we have an order of priests from the tribe of Levi who maintain purity; In fact, the Book of Leviticus could be summarized as Israel's code of purity to coexist with its God. Now, when we talk about purity, it is closely related to holiness, it is not necessarily about being good or bad it is about being ceremonially clean or impure when you are in the presence of a holy being, so what we see in the Book of Leviticus is this theme that the closer immortals get to God, the more ritually pure they are.

They will have to be if they want to survive because what we see happening in the Book of Leviticus is that the holiness of God consumes impurity, it consumes anything that is not ritually pure and that has not been made sacred to be in his presence, it simply consumes it. . almost like a fire consumes kerosene, the holiness of God consumes impurity and that is why God helps the people of Israel to live in their context because they are going to be close to this powerful being who wants to take care of them. and protect them, provide for them and guide them through the desert, then they will need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world because they need to be more ceremonially pure, they need to be more reverent and more set apart. if they are going to live with this other holy being, that is the setup that we are seeing in the Book of Leviticus, it is known as a rule book and that is exactly what Leviticus is, it is God through Moses and Aaron giving to the people of Israel in various groups, various groups of the people of Israel, are guidelines for how they can coexist in very close proximity with a very powerful holy being, so that is what is happening in Leviticus and if you keep this in mind, then the The structure of Leviticus becomes pretty simple, we start with rules for the priests and the priests were these mortal people who stood between God and the rest of humans, so these people were responsible for sacrificing animals, they were responsible for performing various rituals. that helped eliminate impurity.

This is this ritual impurity of the people and themselves and the areas where they would worship God and meet God and help move people into this state of cleanliness or this state of purity. This is where we see many of the sacrifices like burnt offerings and sin offerings that appear in various parts of the Old Testament and during this section, the first 15 chapters, a brother of Aaron Moses, one truly terrible day, Aaron is inaugurated as the supreme priest of Israel who has settled before and his sons enter. this priestly service, but the problem is that he has four sons and only two of them survived his priestly duties.

Two of them die because they do not relate to God in a ritual manner acceptable to Allah, they do not treat Him with reverence, we do not. I know specifically what they did wrong, the Book of Leviticus only says that they offered a strange fire before God and there are all kinds of theories about what that looks like, but the point is that they were in violation of this state of being. clean and presentable for this very holy, very powerful, very set apart being, but two of Aaron's sons survived and continued to serve as priests, so we have this configuration of a group of people designated to go between the mortals and the divine to offer sacrifices and perform rituals and this culminates with chapter sixteen which describes a very, very, very special ritual in ancient Israel and we call it the Day of Atonement and what this ritual does is it essentially cleanses or ensures or preserves the purity of that tabernacle, that tent. cleanse the holy place, which is the place where God, God and the priests could meet and once a year they would practically say, you know, we've been offering these sacrifices, we've been doing all these things on behalf of the people to keep the people safe. cleans ritually, but once a year we are going to do a complete cleansing, make sure the place where we meet with God is pure and clean, make sure that any type of sin or offense against God has been committed. accounted for and then on this day we see two goats being sacrificed, one of them dies and one of them bears the collective sin of the people in the desert and that's where, if you hear people refer to someone as a scapegoat. someone who has someone else's fault, that's where that term comes from, we have a scapegoat involved in this ritual that cleansed the holy place, that Tabernacle and then the second half of the book, chapters 17 to 27 is known as the code of holiness and so we have looked at the holy priests, we have looked at the Holy Place and now we have guidelines for a holy people, these are rules, some of them are for the whole nation, some of them. they're for the priests, but they basically explain ways that the people of Israel can behave in a more ritually pure way or can remain more ceremonially clean around God than nations who worship other gods, so that's what we see.

What happens here is that the standards are higher for priests because they have to interact with God in the tabernacle, obviously the tabernacle needs to remain very, very pure, which is why we had the whole Day of Atonement ceremony that was covered earlier, we learn about some festivals that God gives to the people that Moses and Aaron teach the people how to celebrate and worship their God and how he brought them out of Egypt and created a dwelling place among them, so this is really important to the ancients. The Israelites and in this section the people need to face a choice and what Moses does is say that they can choose between the blessings of living in a way that recognizes this holy being in his presence and maintaining purity, keeping his laws and obeying him and that brings blessings or you can ignore this powerful God who lives among you at your own risk and risk incurring the curses of his discipline, so that's the Book of Leviticus, it's a list of rules and rituals that the ancient Israelites believed They would help them physically coexist. with the creator of the physical realm is a really fascinating concept that sparked the need for this book and I hope this video has helped you understand why it was written and what it is about.

I'm Jeffrey, with an

overview

of the Bible. I make videos and other resources like these to help people understand one of the most important books ever written, and if you want to understand the entire Bible, including the Book of Leviticus, and how it fits into it, in fact, I have written an ebook called Beginner. Bible guide, you can check it out in the link below, it is available on my website. Bible Overview. I hope this has been of great help. Hey, if you want to see more of my videos, go ahead and hit subscribe that way I can notify you like As soon as the next one is posted, I appreciate you checking it out, thanks.